When Gen-Zers go to physical stores, they leave their wallets at home. Smart marketers don’t care. Unlike their grandparents, Gen Zers—people born between 1997 and 2013—don’t view stores as the final stop in the sales process. And unlike their parents, they don’t consider stores merely places to discover and purchase products.
Instead, Gen Z gets its retail perspective from its nearest elders: millennials, who inspired marketers to use physical spaces to entertain consumers and earn their loyalty. Instead of shilling shoes, clothes and tchotchkes, brands are using in-person real estate to introduce extensions of themselves that consumers can touch, feel, experience … and maybe even buy.
